Creeping Multiple Interstitialism as a Negative Indicator of Web Site Health: Often, when you click on an appealing headline at the home page of a Web aggregation side, you're taken, not to the original source, but to another page on the aggregator site that summarizes the story. This second page, known (at least around here) as an "interstitial," allows the aggregator web site to get another "page view" and maybe satisfy readers before they leave the site, perhaps never to return. (Here's one example of such a page.)  Interstitials can be seen as a consumer convenience or a cheap, parasitic, hit-inflating trick . But over at TIME , Mark Halperin's The Page appears to have take the technique a step further. Last week, when I hit on Halperin's home page reference to Politico 's hot story of an "Ominbus Confrontation" between Pelosi and Reid, I got sent, not to the Politico story but to this page on Halperin's site. OK--but from there I could get to the Politico story, right? Nope. From there I could click to a yet another page on Halperin's site that gleaned the juicy bits from Politico's report. A double interstitial.   Innovative! Only from this third Page page could you get to the original Politico story Halperin was cribbing from ... Is Time that desperate? ...  1:46 A.M.

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An American car worth buying? USA Today' s James Healey raves about the Ford Focus SES . Some patriotic recessionary boosterism is probably at work--I don't believe the Focus has "upscale ambience inside." I've looked inside. But still. ... Fits with my non-expert theory that the old, obsolete Focus chassis in the current U.S. model is actually better balanced than the much-hailed modern chassis underneath the European version of the Focus and the tragic Mazda 3 . ... P.S.: The U.S. car looks cheesy but reliability has been good, according to Consumer Reports . ... Made in Wayne, Michigan. ... 1:24 A.M.

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